Sharing the story of the Bible in a way everyone can understand

12/27/17 Love Each Other

“I write these things to you, my children, in the hope that you would try to live in a way that pleases God, instead of living in sin to try to please yourselves. But when you do sin, I want you to understand that Jesus is our Advocate, who intercedes with God our Father on our behalf. He died so that we could be forgiven and set free from sin, all sin, past, present, and future, and His sacrifice paid the penalty for everyone in the whole world and in all of time. If you are His child, you will follow His commandments. If we claim to be His children, but shun His commandments, we are not His, but children of the father of lies. When we follow God’s commandments, His love shines through us like a bright light, and we know that we are in Him and He is in us. If we say we are God’s children, we must strive to live as Jesus lived. My brothers and sisters, I am not writing any new commandments to you, but only of that which you have always known. It is the message of Jesus that you have heard from the beginning, when you first came to believe in Him as your Messiah. But Jesus called it a new commandment, and He lived it out in all that He said and did while He was here among us. This is the commandment to love each other, and I know that it is already lived out in so many of you, because I can see God’s light shining through you, driving away the darkness. Whoever loves his brother or sister lives in God’s light, and can see clearly to follow the path that God sets before him without stumbling. But whoever hates his brother or sister lives in the darkness, blinded by his own hate, stumbling over everything in his path because he cannot see the path he should be on. Come out of the darkness, all who are stumbling, and into the light of love!”